Ham4CW
Administrator
These readers are both good and bad in one package. On the good side we have the portability of the unit, it runs from a standard 9V battery, and takes up very little space. The LCD screen gives a good readable output, and there is even provision for a serial data output that allows the decoded CW to be displayed on a suitable PC.
The bad points however are that the pitch detection has to be set manually and can be quite critical, it takes the unit quite a while to adjust to a new input speed, so if two stations are four or five WPM apart then you may miss a good deal of the conversation as the unit 'hunts' for the correct speed setting, and the microphone input is all but deaf!
With a good deal of fiddling it is possible to get perfect decode with these units, for example as a monitor while practising with a keyer, but when used for off-air decoding they can be VERY hit and miss. The signal fed to the decoder needs to be well conditioned, or at least very clean. Atmospherics, QRM etc, all spell failure for these decoders.
If you get the cance of one cheaply then grab one to try it out, but I would not recommend buying one new at full price since there are far better units around, and indeed many of the new smartphone apps can run circles around these items.
The bad points however are that the pitch detection has to be set manually and can be quite critical, it takes the unit quite a while to adjust to a new input speed, so if two stations are four or five WPM apart then you may miss a good deal of the conversation as the unit 'hunts' for the correct speed setting, and the microphone input is all but deaf!
With a good deal of fiddling it is possible to get perfect decode with these units, for example as a monitor while practising with a keyer, but when used for off-air decoding they can be VERY hit and miss. The signal fed to the decoder needs to be well conditioned, or at least very clean. Atmospherics, QRM etc, all spell failure for these decoders.
If you get the cance of one cheaply then grab one to try it out, but I would not recommend buying one new at full price since there are far better units around, and indeed many of the new smartphone apps can run circles around these items.
